


Home is where the heart(h) fire burns

by unnieunnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: AU priests & gods, Fire God Chanyeol, M/M, Music & theology, Priest Jongdae, Soft beginnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25534921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie
Summary: Prompt EF66: When Jongdae was chosen to be the keeper of the holy flame, he did not expect the flame to start responding to the words he said aloud as he went about his tasks.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Park Chanyeol
Comments: 10
Kudos: 139
Collections: electriFIREd Round 2





	Home is where the heart(h) fire burns

The old priest, Yeoreum, died with a smile on her face. Jongdae had tended her for nearly every second of her brief illness, singing hymns with and then to her, dutifully writing down every scrap she told him while she lay on her narrow bed sweating with fever. He remembered how old she had seemed when he first arrived at the temple several years before, and how she had laughed at him when he groaned his way through the mornings of his first month, unused to so much physical work and long days.

Her laughter was infectious, and never unkind. Jongdae knew he would miss it. He clutched at her hand when her breath started to rattle. He would keep the temple now, keep the holy flame. Only one priest ever entered the flame’s sanctum: now it would be him. He knew what he was supposed to do, but having to actually do it – to be in charge, to be the flame’s voice of authority.

It felt like too much, after only 3 years of training here, no matter how he’d been raised at the main temple in the capitol far away.

It sounded so lonely.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Yeoreum whispered. “Just love the flame well. It’ll be easy for you. The flame is so easy to love.”

He washed her gently when she was gone, and wrapped her in orange cotton. He kissed her cheek before he covered her face. As she’d told him to do, he left her body briefly and changed the hangings inside the temple from ember-red to the pale yellow of new flames.

He wondered, as he lifted her body, what fire-priests did when their former priest was bigger. Drag them, maybe? How undignified. He wasn’t a large man, but he was glad Yeoreum could rest securely in his arms while he carried her.

There was a lot to not think about, as he shouldered his way through the many layers of nearly transparent gauze that hung in the short hallway between the public areas of the temple to the heart, where the holy fire burned: that he was in charge now, that he was alone. That he would keep the fire now, and that he would give Yeoreum’s physical shell to it. That it was his duty to watch the flame take her to her rest.

It was a lot to not think about: all of which flew immediately out of his mind when he stepped close to the low, dim embers, and a face unfolded from them.

“Oh,” the face said.

A shape kept unfolding up out of the fire: a long, thin face; strands of bluish flame like hair; thin limbs and narrow shoulders.

“Oh, my summer,” the holy fire said. “My Miae, you’ve gone ahead of me.”

The fire-being reached out its arms, and Jongdae set Yeoreum in them. The fire – he thought it looked like a woman, with an impossibly sad face – cradled her gently, with a croon that sounded like the low roar of a distant wildfire.

The holy fire sat back on the pedestal, Yeoreum’s form still held close.

“You’re Jongdae,” the fire said, staring down at the orange-draped bundle in its lap. “My Miae told me about you, her successor, bright of face and voice.”

“I thought her name was Yeoreum,” Jongdae said.

He tried to make his voice gentle and low in the face of this god’s grief.

“Yes,” the fire said. “Her priest’s name. Your fire will name you, when I am gone.”

This was a rite no one had ever told him. His fire? Wasn’t it always the same fire? The sacred fire of creation, how could he ever call it his own?

The fire cried out in a wail that echoed around the room and set Jongdae’s ears ringing.

“Miae!” the fire moaned. “Do not go far!”

“She spoke of you with love,” Jongdae said.

The holy fire looked at him. Its eyes were charcoal-black in that miserable face.

“She spoke of you with love,” the fire said. “Sing for us. The hymn of parting. Sing, and carry my blessing with you through my rekindling.”

Jongdae sang the hymn of parting, with the holy flame as a soft, high descant. He could hardly believe no one had ever told him of this – but then, what would they have said that could capture the tenderness of it, the grief and wonder as he sang until the holy fire embraced Yeoreum with a bright flame that consumed them both?

When the hymn was over, the holy flame collapsed into ash. Jongdae’s breath caught in his throat at the thought that the flame had gone out. But it had spoken of rekindling, and there was a hymn for that too. It had 30 verses, and he and his fellow acolytes had complained mightily at being forced to learn them all. But he sang them now, kneeling with his hands clasped in front of the pedestal and staring at the pile of ash that had been his god and his teacher, now intermingled.

By the third verse, there was a faint glow of ember at the center of the ash pile. By the seventh verse, Jongdae took up the fire tools next to the plinth and scraped away some of the ash. By the eleventh verse, he added a small log of blessed cedar. By the twenty-third verse, it was a roaring blaze.

At the end of the thirtieth verse, a new shape rose up out of the fire: outrageously tall, with spiky orange flames suggesting hair and round, shiny black eyes that gave the holy fire an expression of delight and curiosity.

“Oh!” the sacred fire said in a low, crackling voice. “Your song makes me feel as if I’ve awakened with the dawn! Shall you be priest Chen?”

Jongdae looked up at the fire’s broad smile and felt his heart settle into a new rhythm that throbbed in time with the pulsing center of the fire.

“Yes,” he said.

The holy fire grinned brightly.

“It’s very charming of you to agree with me on our first meeting,” it – he – said. “You may call me Chanyeol. What’s your name really?”

“Jongdae.”

“Oh!” the fire said. “Just charming all around, then. How nice. You must be exhausted, after everything. I know I am, rekindling is such an ordeal. Are you well? Are you very sad? I’m happy to listen, but you know, if you need a nap, please don’t feel as if you need to attend me.”

Jongdae felt the exhaustion of the past weeks fall on him like a collapsed building, all at once, now that he had permission to be tired. Hypothetically.

“I can’t just leave you alone, holiness –“

“Chanyeol,” the sacred fire said gently.

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae choked, with a brief prayer for forgiveness directed at his theology instructors.

“You can, my priest,” the sacred fire Chanyeol said. “I see how tired you are. And you’ve neatly piled the ashes of both our predecessors to one side for me. I must consume them, and learn what came before. Go sleep, my dawn. Wash the tears from your face. We have a lifetime to speak. There’s no need to rush the beginning.”

Jongdae did as he was told: he washed his face, and when that took the sharp edge off his exhaustion, the rest of himself. The bewilderment of it all slid around in his mind in a series of mental images that only added up to confusion. His teacher, the fire. His song that brought a new god into being.

That thought was entirely too much for one overtaxed brain and a weary heart to handle. Soon after, Jongdae slept. It was a heavy sleep that left him achy and not much refreshed afterward, though it gave him enough clarity of mind to remember some of his duties. He sang the morning welcome to the sun. He poured some of his tea into the rice pot to make it slightly less dried-out and grim.

It wasn’t that he wished to delay reentering the inner temple – it was just that the nearby town needed to know the news. Pulling down the orange and grey banners that hung in front of the entrance and replacing them with the yellow and blue ones that signaled a new priest took most of the morning, even if Yeoreum had had Jongdae unpack the new ones weeks ago to wash and mend them.

When he finally took a strengthening breath and ducked into the inner temple, the holy fire crackled brightly on the pedestal. This was what Jongdae had expected; a life of service to the flame, feeding it the prayers of the people, and singing for good harvests and healthy babies.

He could understand why no one ever spoke of the flame taking form and speaking. It was such a personal rite, the death of one priest/fire and the rekindling of another. What a memory to carry with him. What a comfort, to know that when his own time came, he would be so tenderly carried into the world beyond.

A face rose up out of the flames, round-eyed with crackling hair. The next breath Jongdae took was neither strong nor steady.

“You’ve been busy!” Chanyeol said. “I’ve seen what it’s like, in the ashes of my predecessor. But I want to hear it from your mouth. Come tell me.”

For a holy being, Chanyeol was surprisingly easy to talk to. He asked a hundred questions, clicked his tongue at Jongdae’s diffident description of his rest. Jongdae thought their conversation might last all day, until Chanyeol raised his dark eyes and stared toward the temple entrance.

“You have guests,” he said.

Jongdae shook his shoulders to put himself back into priest mode.

“It must be the villagers,” he said.

Chanyeol nodded.

“Wait,” he said as Jongdae turned away.

When Jongdae looked at him, Chanyeol held out his hands – slightly transparent, bluish at the center and deep yellow at the edges like a candle flame, with long fingers. Jongdae reached out. Chanyeol’s touch didn’t burn: it was as soothing as a warm bath on a cold day. Jongdae clasped those fingers that felt more solid than they looked, and Chanyeol smiled. Jongdae felt something move through him that made his bones tremble.

“Take a blessing with you,” Chanyeol murmured. “For our people.”

Jongdae barely felt the floor under his feet as he walked out to find the village elders grouped in the atrium.

“Ah,” one old granny said. “You have the spark in you now. Our Yeoreum’s gone for good, then, is she? And what’s your priest name?”

“Chen,” Jongdae said.

He heard the sound ring around the stone walls of the temple. The elders looked up, as if they could see it, and nodded their satisfaction.

“Bless us with your service,” the youngest man – who was not very young, and Jongdae thought he might be the mayor – said.

“I will,” Jongdae said.

He touched them, hands and foreheads, and with each one he felt a little of Chanyeol’s blessing move out of him. He saw the shine of it in their eyes.

“What a lucky thing,” the mayor said as he blotted away a stray tear.

Jongdae led them to the chapel, and they sang the hymn of new partnerships together. The mayor had a decent but breathy baritone, and the granny couldn’t have carried a tune if Chanyeol had placed it in her hands himself.

“Will you be ready in three days to sing with the whole town?” the granny asked afterward, while Jongdae served them tea in the atrium.

He had known these faces before, from his back corner of the temple and his infrequent trips to market. They’d seemed intimidating then – the town elders, people he would eventually have to both please and depend on for food and clothing. But they smiled at him now. They had sung with him, and he could see the faint shimmer of Chanyeol’s blessings on them still.

“I’ll be ready,” he said.

Chanyeol sat on his plinth with both hands wrapped over his mouth and his eyes crinkled up into crescents.

“What a caterwaul!” he said. “Have I manifested among a congregation of tigers?”

Jongdae hadn’t ever dared to imagine that he would hear a god giggle. It was infectious.

“Granny Kang is among the most respectable members of the community,” he said. “She’s much too busy to bother with little details like melody.”

A god’s belly laugh was even better.

The three days to his investiture were among the best of Jongdae’s life. He had always been mindful of his duty. His parents had dedicated him to the temple when he was so little that he barely remembered them; he had never disliked life as an acolyte, despite complaining endlessly about chores and early rising. He had had friends and teachers who had cared for him beyond the bare minimum of instruction.

He had never imagined what it would be like to have the holy flame say “my priest” in a tone as warm as a winter hearth and to feel it reverberate like a tide in his blood.

And really, for a god, Chanyeol was endlessly curious. he wanted to know about Jongdae’s childhood, about the mountains that surrounded them, and the village. Jongdae found himself dredging up old jokes and silly stories, just to see Chanyeol laugh and clap his hands until they made sparks.

“What were you before?” Jongdae dared to ask once, late at night.

Chanyeol’s constant movement stopped; he glowed, and Jongdae felt the warmth of it, a holiness greater than the physical temperature.

“I was nothing,” Chanyeol said. “My predecessor was the god here. I was the idea of an ember, waiting for you.”

Jongdae turned that over in his mind - while he cleaned the temple; while Chanyeol’s blessing filled him until he brimmed with it; while he sang the hymns of sorrow, farewell, and welcome with the town; as he stood among the villagers in the atrium and accepted gifts while he handed out the tea cakes he had stayed up all night to bake.

The villagers were generous. It was summer, but they gave him both fresh fruits and preserved, sacks of rice and millet, lengths of cloth. Their eyes were warm as they handed the offerings over. Jongdae knew his hands were warm as he touched them with blessing. At the end of it, Jongdae felt quiet, as if his feet rested securely on the floor. He set the offerings down when everyone had left and brushed through the hangings.

Chanyeol smiled at him from the plinth, brighter even than the light of his own fire.

“Did they accept you?”

“I think so,” Jongdae said.

Chanyeol’s smile softened.

“Of course they did,” he said. “My Chen.”

Jongdae knelt by the pedestal. It didn’t feel particularly reverent, since he rested his chin on the top of it, and Chanyeol combed warm fingers through his hair.

“Is this how we’re to be?” Jongdae asked.

Chanyeol’s hand was warm against his cheek.

“I am the holy fire and you are my priest,” he said in his voice of crackling flames. “Together we bless this land. But the form of that blessing is ours to choose.”

Jongdae had felt the way Chanyeol’s blessing flowed into him, soothing as hot tea in a thick pottery mug. Now, as his own heart seemed to contract and then unfold in his chest, into something larger than it had been before – he wondered, from the way the god’s dark eyes widened and sparked, the way Jongdae felt those fingers catch in his hair, whether Chanyeol felt it.

“What blessing do you want?” Chanyeol asked in the whisper of ash dropping off a log.

Jongdae stood; with Chanyeol sitting on his plinth, they were almost eye to eye. Jongdae had to sigh at the slide of Chanyeol’s hand, down his arm, until they twined their fingers together.

“Can I choose you?” he asked.

“Have we not already chosen each other, to serve this land?”

Chanyeol’s voice was still that low rasp, and his eyes were so round, so dark.

Jongdae squeezed his fingers, and the god in the fire shivered.

“I think your predecessor loved mine,” he said.

“Yes.”

Here was the blessing that kept their village safe and fed: this god who gave out blessings without hesitation, whose smile was as wide as the horizon. And he had named Jongdae as the dawn. “Waiting for you,” he had said.

When he had first been given to the temple as a child, it was enough to have a warm blanket at night and a full belly. Later, it was enough simply to sing: to stand in a crowd of harmony and feel how music filled him up just as much as any dinner.

Here, with Yeoreum, it had been a thinner music. But he had been satisfied by her wisdom and company, and the thought that here was a place where he could root himself, be part of the town’s song. Maybe a descant on the edges, but still part of the whole. And that was enough.

He was used to enough. He would’ve been happy with enough. But here was a chance for more – maybe his only one. He wouldn’t have felt brave enough to reach for it, if he hadn’t been holding a god’s hand.

But then, he hadn’t known until recently that gods even had hands to hold. Practical theology was _much_ better than theoretical.

He grinned, and Chanyeol’s shoulders hitched.

“Can a priest ask for the blessing of a god’s love?”

The god in the fire smiled so broadly that Jongdae’s heart rang like a bell.

“Oh yes,” Chanyeol said, tugging Jongdae closer.

Jongdae stumbled forward into a fire that didn’t burn him, into arms that fit around him as if he were made for them.

“Yes, please ask it of me every day.”


End file.
